Field of Art
Aspects of embodiments of the present invention relate to an imaging apparatus.
Description of the Related Art
In related art, an imaging apparatus such as a digital camera performs development processing (processing of generating image data in a format recognizable as an image) on a raw image captured by an imaging unit (RAW image). It is common to perform compression coding on the developed image data and record the compressed data into a recording medium.
Some imaging apparatuses are capable of recording a RAW image. An example of such an apparatus is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2011-244423. As compared with a JPEG image, a RAW image is advantageous in that it is possible to minimize a decrease in image quality, although the amount of data necessary for recording is huge.
In order to process a large amount of data such as RAW image data at a high speed, hardware that has high processing capability is necessary. However, hardware that has high processing capability is large in circuit size and high in power consumption. Moreover, there is a possibility of high cost because a memory that has large capacity is required.
The number of pixels of an image that an imaging unit is capable of capturing has recently been increasing. As the number of imaging pixels increases, so does the load of processing for development of a RAW image. For this reason, hardware that has high processing capability is necessary for realizing real-time development processing concurrent with shooting without sacrificing high shooting functionality, for example, continuous shooting speed.
On the other hand, it is conceivable to record a RAW image only at the time of shooting, and to perform development processing later when the necessity of image display or printing arises. However, a RAW image data format is a unique format of each individual manufacturer of imaging apparatuses. For this reason, it is not possible to develop a RAW image recorded by an imaging apparatus of a certain manufacturer on a device of other manufacturer properly, which will result in poor user-friendliness.